It looks like pork but tastes like beef, is cheap­er than most tra­di­tion­al meats and tout­ed as healthy.

Capy­baras, known as the largest swamp ro­dents in the world, are be­ing hunt­ed for their meat by many lo­cals who have ac­quired a taste and crav­ing for it.

Peo­ple in T&T are al­ready eat­ing a ro­dent, the agouti.

A del­i­ca­cy in South Amer­i­ca, for­mer Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez pro­mot­ed em­panadas with the meat washed down with pa­paya juice.

Capybara bacon.

In T&T, lo­cal chef and culi­nary au­thor Ja­son Pe­ru is mak­ing waves with the prepa­ra­tion of the meat for ba­con, stew, cur­ry, geera and ham­burg­er, capy­bara meat­ball and spaghet­ti and mince capy­bara lasagne. He is even cur­ing capy­bara pro­sciut­to (Ital­ian word for ham).

For Christ­mas Pe­ru made a batch of capy­bara ba­con that tast­ed so amaz­ing, he is in the process of mak­ing more and tweak­ing the cur­ing and smok­ing time.

His friends loved eat­ing it and raved about it, but when he pub­li­cised it on his Face­book page some peo­ple were scep­ti­cal and cri­tiqued it, while oth­ers were more ac­cept­ing and will­ing to try it.

"World's largest rat," one of Pe­ru's Face­book fans wrote, while an­oth­er added, "I will nev­er eat it, you lost a fan to­day." Un­per­turbed, Pe­ru re­spond­ed calm­ly, "No prob­lem," and pressed on to in­form oth­ers of its ver­sa­til­i­ty and suc­cu­lent taste.

"Great tast­ing wild meat," "Lean and tasty, drop a lil cas­sa­reep in there and you set for life," oth­ers post­ed.

To the scep­tics, he as­sured, "Trust me, you won't know the dif­fer­ence if you tast­ed it."

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian Pe­ru said "I looked at the anato­my of the capy­bara, which I learned is an in­va­sive species and found it re­sem­bled a pig. It has this nice droop­ing bel­ly just like a pig and I won­dered how would ba­con made from it taste?" He took the bold step and tried it; the capy­bara ba­con turned out amaz­ing, Pe­ru said ex­cit­ed­ly.

Capybara pepperpot

He said when the meat was prepped, it looked just like pork, with the same front, back leg, ribs, bel­ly cuts, but it tast­ed ex­act­ly like beef be­cause of the bold, ro­bust flavour as a re­sult of the se­mi-aquat­ic en­vi­ron­ment it lived in, while pork tend­ed to have a milder, more sub­tle fla­vour.

The capy­baras are her­bi­vores and eat aquat­ic plants such as wa­ter bal­isiers, wa­ter lilies and swamp grass. Pe­ru de­scribed caby­bara meat as ex­treme­ly healthy as it is low in cho­les­terol and sat­u­rat­ed fat.

The an­i­mal de­vel­oped a thick skin, an adap­ta­tion for aquat­ic life and swamp con­di­tions, with al­most one inch of fat.

Pe­ru said, how­ev­er, he re­moved at least 70-80 per cent of fat from the meat be­fore prepar­ing it to eat.

"I was in­tro­duced to capy­bara hunt­ing by some vet­er­an hunters," he said.

"It's very im­por­tant for me to al­ways try to make from scratch, the roots and source of foods such as mak­ing my own cheese, but­ter, ba­con, wine, yeast," he added.

The au­thor of “The Im­preg­na­tion of Flavour" be­lieves that once peo­ple are ed­u­cat­ed capy­baras can be a vi­able op­tion for pork, beef and chick­en in su­per­mar­kets.

Pe­ru opined that the capy­bara can al­so be an in­come gen­er­a­tor

Even the skin of the capy­bara is valu­able.

Pe­ru ex­plained that capy­baras are con­sid­ered by some lux­u­ry brands as the finest leather in the world.

Capy­bara leather, al­so known as Carpin­cho leather, ages well and gets even more com­fort­able with time.

The leather is used in fash­ion hous­es to make gloves, jack­ets, shoes and hats as well as hand­bags and ruck­sacks.

Capy­baras are found in Pana­ma, Colom­bia, Venezuela, Guyana, Pe­ru, Brazil, Paraguay, North­east Ar­genti­na and Uruguay. They are easy to hunt be­cause of their weight, as some can cross over 200 lbs.

Meat from the Capybara shoulder to be minced for burger.

Pe­ru added, how­ev­er, that capy­baras are de­cep­tive­ly fast over short dis­tances, about as fast as an av­er­age dog.

The capy­baras are brought in­to the coun­try in pirogues from Venezuela along with oth­er ex­ot­ic an­i­mals such as mon­keys and birds as a cov­er to smug­gle guns, am­mu­ni­tion, al­co­hol, and drugs and re­leased in­to the wild af­ter the il­le­gal trans­ac­tions are con­duct­ed suc­cess­ful­ly.

A pro­lif­ic breed­er like the rab­bit, the capy­bara has be­come an in­va­sive species de­stroy­ing farm­ers' crops pri­mar­i­ly in Or­ange Field in Cara­pichaima, Aranguez South and North and Or­ange Grove.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat re­vealed that the capy­bara though not na­tive to T&T has been here for over 20 years, pri­mar­i­ly in the Or­ange Field, Cara­pichaima area and then in the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary area.

He said it even­tu­al­ly be­came a pest to the farm­ers in Aranguez South, then North and Or­ange Grove.

Ramb­harat was hap­py to see that it is be­ing con­sumed in T&T and said the min­istry will be hap­py to con­sid­er pro­pos­als for com­mer­cial use of the capy­bara.

Ramb­harat dis­closed that Chef Ja­son Pe­ru was one he fol­lowed a lot be­cause he loved his style and the way he pro­mot­ed lo­cal cui­sine.

He was hap­py that Pe­ru was show­ing off the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the capy­bara.

The min­is­ter con­firmed that sev­er­al years ago, the min­istry list­ed the capy­bara as a pest un­der the Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Act so that landown­ers can kill it and they are free to con­sume it.

When asked about the po­ten­tial to save forex and gen­er­ate new rev­enue streams with capy­bara meat and leather, Ramb­harat said he would leave that for the in­vestors to de­ter­mine.

Ramb­harat said there were many skins with com­mer­cial po­ten­tial, but that re­quired pri­vate sec­tor ex­plo­ration.

Re­gard­ing capy­bara as an al­ter­na­tive to im­port­ed meat, he saw the po­ten­tial if the lo­cal con­sumer will ex­plore the al­ter­na­tive.

No mat­ter the po­ten­tial of the capy­bara, Ramb­harat opined that it ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend­ed on the pur­chas­ing de­ci­sion the con­sumer made.